e and to such historical rank. And yet it is in France that the
people of the communes, the burgherdom, reached the most complete and
most powerful development, and ended by acquiring the most decided
preponderance in the general social structure. There have been communes,
we say, throughout Europe; but there has not really been a victorious
third estate anywhere, save in France. The revolution of 1789, the
greatest ever seen, was the culminating point arrived at by the third
estate; and France is the only country in which a man of large mind
could, in a burst of burgher's pride, exclaim, "What is the third estate?
Everything."

Since the explosion, and after all the changes, liberal and illiberal,
due to the revolution of 1789, there has been a common-place, ceaselessly
repeated, to the effect that there are no more classes in French society
--there is only a nation of thirty-seven millions of persons. If it be
meant that there are now no more privileges in France, no special laws
and private rights for such and such families, proprietorships, and
occupations, and that legislation is the same, and there is perfect
freedom of movement for all, at all steps of the social ladder, it is
true; oneness of laws and similarity of rights, is now the essential and
characteristic fact of civil society in France, an immense, an excellent,
and a novel fact in the history of human associations. But beneath the
dominance of this fact, in the midst of this national unity and this
civil equality, there evidently and necessarily exist numerous and
important diversities and inequalities, which oneness of laws and
similarity of rights neither prevent nor destroy. In point of property,
real or personal, land or capital, there are rich and poor; there are the
large, the middling, and the small property. Though the great
proprietors may be less numerous and less rich, and the middling and the
small proprietors more numerous and more powerful than they were of yore,
this does not prevent the difference from being real and great enough to
create, in the civil body, social positions widely different and unequal.
In the professions which are called liberal, and which live by brains and
knowledge, amongst barristers, doctors, scholars, and literates of all
kinds, some rise to the first rank, attract to themselves practice and
success, and win fame, wealth, and influence; others make enough, by hard
work, for the necessities of their familie